Katherine Paterson Quotes

I don't know if we tell women great news about themselves enough. You'd be surprised how often a young woman doesn't hear positive things about herself - not in her home, not at school. It's hard to create a beautiful image for yourself when you've never seen it or heard it.

The only wealth I have to give, is not material - and if you need much more than that, I'm not available.

Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.

If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.

I ain't got no money - But I'm rich on personality

If you get validation from outside, then suddenly everything you do at home is justified.

My life is more to me than all the wealth of Ilius

Hollywood is like high school, there are always going to be people who hate you and people who like you. When you're a teen, [that's tough] because you're hyper-aware of what other people are gonna say and think. But neither defines who you are as a person or how successful you are unless you let them.

We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what lies in our hearts.

If I'm such a legend, then why am I so lonely? If I'm such a legend, then why do I sit at home for hours staring at the damned telephone, hoping it's out of order, even calling the operator asking her if she's sure it's not out of order?

That which makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is that which wounds our own.

Though the funny thing about never being asked for anything is that after a while you start to feel like maybe you don’t have anything worth giving.

True abundance isn't based on our net worth, it's based on our self-worth.

With its array of gadgets and machines, all powered by energies that are destructive of land or air or water, and connected to work, market, school, recreation, etc., by gasoline engines, the modern home is a veritable factory of waste and destruction. It is the mainstay of the economy of money. But within the economies of energy and nature, it is a catastrophe. It takes in the world's goods and converts them into garbage, sewage, and noxious fumes-for none of which have we found a use.

I wasn't popular in school, I was Mexican, I was all these inappropriate things. I started playing the ukulele and taking it to school, and I realized people liked listening to it. I would play it to comfort myself at home, and I'd play rhythm and blues songs that had four chords. That's how it started.

What being home-schooled has taught me, more than anything, is what a waste of a life high school is.

Home is the first school for us all, a school with no fixed curriculum, no quality control, no examinations, no teacher training

My mother was an extraordinary theater actor in Canada, and when I would finish school, I would go to the theater. I would do my homework, we would have dinner there, she would do her play, and then me and my sister would go home. So I grew up in it that way.

Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.

The measure of self-assurance is how deeply and sincerely interested you are in others; the measure of insecurity is how much you try to impress them with you.

It's flattering that people think I'm sexy, but it's not the end-all, be-all. The minute I put my self-esteem on what they think I am, I'm screwed, because one day they're not going to think I'm sexy.

I don't understand why people like me! It doesn't make any sense!

As women, we are constantly told that we need to compare ourselves to a girl in school, to our co-­workers, to the images in a magazine. How is the world going to advance if we're always comparing ourselves to others?

Get rid of those friends of yours who make fun of you and don't believe in you. And when you leave here tonight, go home, make a phone call and fire them. Anyone that doesn't believe in you and your future, to hell with them.